Vanity Fair (63 page)

At games of cards he was equally skilful; for though he would
constantly lose money at the commencement of an evening, playing so
carelessly and making such blunders, that newcomers were often
inclined to think meanly of his talent; yet when roused to action
and awakened to caution by repeated small losses, it was remarked
that Crawley's play became quite different, and that he was pretty
sure of beating his enemy thoroughly before the night was over.
Indeed, very few men could say that they ever had the better of him.
His successes were so repeated that no wonder the envious and the
vanquished spoke sometimes with bitterness regarding them. And as
the French say of the Duke of Wellington, who never suffered a
defeat, that only an astonishing series of lucky accidents enabled
him to be an invariable winner; yet even they allow that he cheated
at Waterloo, and was enabled to win the last great trick: so it was
hinted at headquarters in England that some foul play must have
taken place in order to account for the continuous successes of
Colonel Crawley.

Though Frascati's and the Salon were open at that time in Paris, the
mania for play was so widely spread that the public gambling-rooms
did not suffice for the general ardour, and gambling went on in
private houses as much as if there had been no public means for
gratifying the passion. At Crawley's charming little reunions of an
evening this fatal amusement commonly was practised—much to good-
natured little Mrs. Crawley's annoyance. She spoke about her
husband's passion for dice with the deepest grief; she bewailed it
to everybody who came to her house. She besought the young fellows
never, never to touch a box; and when young Green, of the Rifles,
lost a very considerable sum of money, Rebecca passed a whole night
in tears, as the servant told the unfortunate young gentleman, and
actually went on her knees to her husband to beseech him to remit
the debt, and burn the acknowledgement. How could he? He had lost
just as much himself to Blackstone of the Hussars, and Count Punter
of the Hanoverian Cavalry. Green might have any decent time; but
pay?—of course he must pay; to talk of burning IOU's was child's
play.

Other officers, chiefly young—for the young fellows gathered round
Mrs. Crawley—came from her parties with long faces, having dropped
more or less money at her fatal card-tables. Her house began to
have an unfortunate reputation. The old hands warned the less
experienced of their danger. Colonel O'Dowd, of the —th regiment,
one of those occupying in Paris, warned Lieutenant Spooney of that
corps. A loud and violent fracas took place between the infantry
Colonel and his lady, who were dining at the Cafe de Paris, and
Colonel and Mrs. Crawley; who were also taking their meal there. The
ladies engaged on both sides. Mrs. O'Dowd snapped her fingers in
Mrs. Crawley's face and called her husband "no betther than a black-
leg." Colonel Crawley challenged Colonel O'Dowd, C.B. The
Commander-in-Chief hearing of the dispute sent for Colonel Crawley,
who was getting ready the same pistols "which he shot Captain
Marker," and had such a conversation with him that no duel took
place. If Rebecca had not gone on her knees to General Tufto,
Crawley would have been sent back to England; and he did not play,
except with civilians, for some weeks after.

But, in spite of Rawdon's undoubted skill and constant successes, it
became evident to Rebecca, considering these things, that their
position was but a precarious one, and that, even although they paid
scarcely anybody, their little capital would end one day by
dwindling into zero. "Gambling," she would say, "dear, is good to
help your income, but not as an income itself. Some day people may
be tired of play, and then where are we?" Rawdon acquiesced in the
justice of her opinion; and in truth he had remarked that after a
few nights of his little suppers, &c., gentlemen were tired of play
with him, and, in spite of Rebecca's charms, did not present
themselves very eagerly.

Easy and pleasant as their life at Paris was, it was after all only
an idle dalliance and amiable trifling; and Rebecca saw that she
must push Rawdon's fortune in their own country. She must get him a
place or appointment at home or in the colonies, and she determined
to make a move upon England as soon as the way could be cleared for
her. As a first step she had made Crawley sell out of the Guards
and go on half-pay. His function as aide-de-camp to General Tufto
had ceased previously. Rebecca laughed in all companies at that
officer, at his toupee (which he mounted on coming to Paris), at his
waistband, at his false teeth, at his pretensions to be a lady-
killer above all, and his absurd vanity in fancying every woman whom
he came near was in love with him. It was to Mrs. Brent, the
beetle-browed wife of Mr. Commissary Brent, to whom the general
transferred his attentions now—his bouquets, his dinners at the
restaurateurs', his opera-boxes, and his knick-knacks. Poor Mrs.
Tufto was no more happy than before, and had still to pass long
evenings alone with her daughters, knowing that her General was gone
off scented and curled to stand behind Mrs. Brent's chair at the
play. Becky had a dozen admirers in his place, to be sure, and
could cut her rival to pieces with her wit. But, as we have said,
she. was growing tired of this idle social life: opera-boxes and
restaurateur dinners palled upon her: nosegays could not be laid by
as a provision for future years: and she could not live upon knick-
knacks, laced handkerchiefs, and kid gloves. She felt the frivolity
of pleasure and longed for more substantial benefits.

At this juncture news arrived which was spread among the many
creditors of the Colonel at Paris, and which caused them great
satisfaction. Miss Crawley, the rich aunt from whom he expected his
immense inheritance, was dying; the Colonel must haste to her
bedside. Mrs. Crawley and her child would remain behind until he
came to reclaim them. He departed for Calais, and having reached
that place in safety, it might have been supposed that he went to
Dover; but instead he took the diligence to Dunkirk, and thence
travelled to Brussels, for which place he had a former predilection.
The fact is, he owed more money at London than at Paris; and he
preferred the quiet little Belgian city to either of the more noisy
capitals.

Her aunt was dead. Mrs. Crawley ordered the most intense mourning
for herself and little Rawdon. The Colonel was busy arranging the
affairs of the inheritance. They could take the premier now,
instead of the little entresol of the hotel which they occupied.
Mrs. Crawley and the landlord had a consultation about the new
hangings, an amicable wrangle about the carpets, and a final
adjustment of everything except the bill. She went off in one of
his carriages; her French bonne with her; the child by her side; the
admirable landlord and landlady smiling farewell to her from the
gate. General Tufto was furious when he heard she was gone, and
Mrs. Brent furious with him for being furious; Lieutenant Spooney
was cut to the heart; and the landlord got ready his best apartments
previous to the return of the fascinating little woman and her
husband. He
serred
the trunks which she left in his charge with
the greatest care. They had been especially recommended to him by
Madame Crawley. They were not, however, found to be particularly
valuable when opened some time after.

But before she went to join her husband in the Belgic capital, Mrs.
Crawley made an expedition into England, leaving behind her her
little son upon the continent, under the care of her French maid.

The parting between Rebecca and the little Rawdon did not cause
either party much pain. She had not, to say truth, seen much of the
young gentleman since his birth. After the amiable fashion of French
mothers, she had placed him out at nurse in a village in the
neighbourhood of Paris, where little Rawdon passed the first months
of his life, not unhappily, with a numerous family of foster-
brothers in wooden shoes. His father would ride over many a time to
see him here, and the elder Rawdon's paternal heart glowed to see
him rosy and dirty, shouting lustily, and happy in the making of
mud-pies under the superintendence of the gardener's wife, his
nurse.

Rebecca did not care much to go and see the son and heir. Once he
spoiled a new dove-coloured pelisse of hers. He preferred his
nurse's caresses to his mamma's, and when finally he quitted that
jolly nurse and almost parent, he cried loudly for hours. He was
only consoled by his mother's promise that he should return to his
nurse the next day; indeed the nurse herself, who probably would
have been pained at the parting too, was told that the child would
immediately be restored to her, and for some time awaited quite
anxiously his return.

In fact, our friends may be said to have been among the first of
that brood of hardy English adventurers who have subsequently
invaded the Continent and swindled in all the capitals of Europe.
The respect in those happy days of 1817-18 was very great for the
wealth and honour of Britons. They had not then learned, as I am
told, to haggle for bargains with the pertinacity which now
distinguishes them. The great cities of Europe had not been as yet
open to the enterprise of our rascals. And whereas there is now
hardly a town of France or Italy in which you shall not see some
noble countryman of our own, with that happy swagger and insolence
of demeanour which we carry everywhere, swindling inn-landlords,
passing fictitious cheques upon credulous bankers, robbing coach-
makers of their carriages, goldsmiths of their trinkets, easy
travellers of their money at cards, even public libraries of their
books—thirty years ago you needed but to be a Milor Anglais,
travelling in a private carriage, and credit was at your hand
wherever you chose to seek it, and gentlemen, instead of cheating,
were cheated. It was not for some weeks after the Crawleys'
departure that the landlord of the hotel which they occupied during
their residence at Paris found out the losses which he had
sustained: not until Madame Marabou, the milliner, made repeated
visits with her little bill for articles supplied to Madame Crawley;
not until Monsieur Didelot from Boule d'Or in the Palais Royal had
asked half a dozen times whether cette charmante Miladi who had
bought watches and bracelets of him was de retour. It is a fact that
even the poor gardener's wife, who had nursed madame's child, was
never paid after the first six months for that supply of the milk of
human kindness with which she had furnished the lusty and healthy
little Rawdon. No, not even the nurse was paid—the Crawleys were
in too great a hurry to remember their trifling debt to her. As for
the landlord of the hotel, his curses against the English nation
were violent for the rest of his natural life. He asked all
travellers whether they knew a certain Colonel Lor Crawley—avec sa
femme une petite dame, tres spirituelle. "Ah, Monsieur!" he would
add—"ils m'ont affreusement vole." It was melancholy to hear his
accents as he spoke of that catastrophe.

Rebecca's object in her journey to London was to effect a kind of
compromise with her husband's numerous creditors, and by offering
them a dividend of ninepence or a shilling in the pound, to secure a
return for him into his own country. It does not become us to trace
the steps which she took in the conduct of this most difficult
negotiation; but, having shown them to their satisfaction that the
sum which she was empowered to offer was all her husband's available
capital, and having convinced them that Colonel Crawley would prefer
a perpetual retirement on the Continent to a residence in this
country with his debts unsettled; having proved to them that there
was no possibility of money accruing to him from other quarters, and
no earthly chance of their getting a larger dividend than that which
she was empowered to offer, she brought the Colonel's creditors
unanimously to accept her proposals, and purchased with fifteen
hundred pounds of ready money more than ten times that amount of
debts.

Mrs. Crawley employed no lawyer in the transaction. The matter was
so simple, to have or to leave, as she justly observed, that she
made the lawyers of the creditors themselves do the business. And
Mr. Lewis representing Mr. Davids, of Red Lion Square, and Mr. Moss
acting for Mr. Manasseh of Cursitor Street (chief creditors of the
Colonel's), complimented his lady upon the brilliant way in which
she did business, and declared that there was no professional man
who could beat her.

Rebecca received their congratulations with perfect modesty; ordered
a bottle of sherry and a bread cake to the little dingy lodgings
where she dwelt, while conducting the business, to treat the enemy's
lawyers: shook hands with them at parting, in excellent good humour,
and returned straightway to the Continent, to rejoin her husband and
son and acquaint the former with the glad news of his entire
liberation. As for the latter, he had been considerably neglected
during his mother's absence by Mademoiselle Genevieve, her French
maid; for that young woman, contracting an attachment for a soldier
in the garrison of Calais, forgot her charge in the society of this
militaire, and little Rawdon very narrowly escaped drowning on
Calais sands at this period, where the absent Genevieve had left and
lost him.

And so, Colonel and Mrs. Crawley came to London: and it is at their
house in Curzon Street, May Fair, that they really showed the skill
which must be possessed by those who would live on the resources
above named.

The Subject Continued

In the first place, and as a matter of the greatest necessity, we
are bound to describe how a house may be got for nothing a year.
These mansions are to be had either unfurnished, where, if you have
credit with Messrs. Gillows or Bantings, you can get them
splendidly montees and decorated entirely according to your own
fancy; or they are to be let furnished, a less troublesome and
complicated arrangement to most parties. It was so that Crawley and
his wife preferred to hire their house.